Rest
by Nikoru-chan
Summary: It's been a long time since Dick last needed to drug his little brother senseless.


Disclaimer: Robin belongs to DC comics. DC comics does not belong to me. If it did, Tim and Kon would still be snark-bantering at each other across a table full of long-suffering Teen Titans.

Note: My comic shop and I are in different states (geographical, not - presumably - physical). I am as a result extremely behind on current happenings in the DCU. I've recently gotten my paws on the TPB Teen Titans: Titans of Tomorrow, which has prompted me to do this little snippet despite the fact that I've already done the whole Robin-putting-gun-to-his-head thing in a fanfic before this.

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It's been a long time since he last needed to drug his little brother senseless, and the return of that necessity unsettles him.

He slides the boy onto the couch - a new, more comfortable one he quietly went and bought when it became clear that the current Boy Wonder would be crashing on it with frequent regularity - and resolutely ignores the boneless flaccidity with which the youngster sprawls.

There's too little to Tim, he's all sharp angles and stress and even asleep he doesn't lose the little-boy-lost aspect that makes Dick's heart ache for the kid. Though now it's joined by a haunted look that Dick's starting to find a depressingly common sight on his little brother's face.

Too much loss. Too much misery. He suspects he ought to be grateful the boy made it to his apartment at all, that he still sees Dick as a big brother, given how frighteningly focussed he had been on cloning back his best friend. In the recent past, that focus had led him to shut people out, to lock himself in with his hurt.

Then again, it wasn't really like the kid had much choice about coming to him. Dick had seen the footage from the hospital security camera, then wiped it himself; Tim and an older Tim in a batsuit (and Dick wonders how that came to be, is gratefully aware that he'll never ask and Tim will never tell.) The fight with a Starro-slung Prometheus.

He suspects that his little brother putting a gun to his temple will be an image that will paint his nightmares in various hues of 'awful' for years to come.

Of course, the only way to avoid that is to keep his brother safe, which is manifestly impossible given the life they lead. Failing that, he'll settle for keeping him whole. And the mind-reading white Martian who's become his kid brother's firm friend (and how on earth - or off it - did _that_ happen?) knows that, has similar goals.

And doesn't seem to mind at all when Robin slips out of Titans tower and onto a motorbike, seeking solace in the highways and countryside on the landward side of the bay. She lets Dick know, though; a stilted phone call whose poor connection does nothing to hide the hesitant uncertainty in her voice. Dick doesn't have to be a mind-reader himself to understand her unfamiliarity with humanity, her fear that once again by trying to help she's overstepping a boundary she didn't even know existed. But Tim has been unfailingly kind and patient with her, and she trusts in that if nothing else.

Tim himself, it seems, doesn't trust in much at all. Let alone himself.

Dick can almost taste the two desires warring in his kid brother's mind when the boy finally makes it to Dick's apartment after the elder calls him, comes in through the window and throws himself on that oh-so-comfortable couch, a quivering bundle of anguish.

He could clone his friends. He could keep trying and he would _eventually_ succeed. The future Titans have demonstrated _that_ to him, at least. And to have hope where for so long there was none . . .

It carves him up like a diamond blade, slicing him to shredded tatters of misery.

To bring his friends back, he would have to willingly condemn half a continent to a fascist dictatorship. He would have to kill dozens, possibly hundreds in the process.

The thought, Dick can tell with no small amount of relief, is utter anathema. But despite that, his heart goes out to the boy.

Even Tim's hope is tainted, the seed of evil.

Dick wonders how, in the face of all he's lost, Tim manages to bring himself to care about the shades of grey at all, let alone this much. How he can remain such a good person that it tears him up inside. Dick mulls it over, and is not-so-secretly glad that Robin was distracted before he pulled that trigger, for there's no doubt in his mind that the other vigilante is ethical enough to have done just that, should his older self have pushed hard enough.

So when his brother settles on the couch - misery traded for a too-calm facade, bone-weary fatigue sloughed from his posture by sheer willpower - Dick scrambles to come up with an explanation long enough, boring enough, yet potentially important enough to keep him there while M'gann does her thing, and Dick readies his. The youngster is so keyed up, and so _tired_ that he doesn't even manage to finish the can of Zesti Dick hands him before he's yawning and apologizing for it.

Dick watches as the tension bleeds from his kid brother's shoulders, fancies he can almost see M'gann's gentle - and apparently unfelt - withdrawal from the Boy Wonder's mind. Tim starts to look hazed and vulnerable and that's Dick's cue to hold his own breath, then snap open one of Batman's sleep pellets under the younger vigilante's nose, taking advantage of his sudden indrawn gasp. The drug Dick's using on him is quite short acting, as subtle as a brick.

The drug Tim's older self dosed him with under cover of smoke and fire will take longer, but asking M'gann to keep acting as a barrier between Tim's admittedly brilliant synapses and a chemical designed to enhance their susceptibility to suggestion for the duration of the dose is too much for her already taxed resources; it has been a long few days and keeping him safe while he rode a motorbike was a big enough ask already. Besides which, the elder Tim was frighteningly good at suggestion.

Far better for Tim to sleep it off, give the seeds of self-doubt and despair that his elder self has attempted to sow in his mind no purchase, no fertile ground in which to grow. Seeds that the younger would shake off without effort, were it not for the chemicals the elder had deliberately sent coursing through his younger self's system in a self-perpetuating cycle that would enable enough of a change of psyche in the younger to create the older, who would then drug his younger self to create . . .

Thinking about the effects that that has on history makes Dick's head hurt. But Tim's surrendered so completely to the sleeping gas that Dick has to wonder whether it's the other drug, or a bone-weary fatigue, that's causing the synergy.

Either way, he thinks as he pulls a thick blanket from his own bed, returns to the couch to drape it over slumped shoulders, he's glad Tim's sleeping it off.

He's going to give up his hopes and his dreams, all to ensure a brighter future for the majority than what pursuing them would produce for his own little minority. Dick knows his little brother, knows that that's the choice Tim will make when he's no longer drug-addled, wishes he could strangle the elder version for adding his own little dose of misery to the mountain of grief the boy wonder is already bearing.

And settles down to watch over his little brother. Drug induced or not, he deserves a restful sleep for once.

Fin.

Note: Inspired by that scene in Titans of Tomorrow where TimBatman is trying to talk TimRobin round to his (homicidal) way of thinking, and _**gives**_ him the gun (and the downed Prometheus), despite Tim Jr's apparent suicidal ideation a mere two pages earlier. Tim then sits there, in a burning building, in front of another human being (Prometheus) who - being unconscious - requires rescuing, and thinks. Doesn't move to get Prometheus and/or himself out, doesn't try to go help his teammates, doesn't check and see if Tim Sr. has in fact helped clear the hospital of bystanders or if there are more people to rescue, just kneels there. This to me seemed very out of character for Tim in particular and given how much killing is an utter anathema to the Batfamily in general, I figured the only way Tim Sr. could have introduced this much self-doubt into Tim Jr. is by dosing him with some sort of agent designed to increase his susceptibility to suggestion, then 'suggesting' he go kill people. This would then naturally require a substantial amount of Tim's energy and focus to combat it internally. The fact that after M'gann pulled him away from Tim Sr.'s influence Tim Jr. perked right up and got back to helping people only supported that theory. Hence this fic.

As always, C+C on the story greatly appreciated, and I'd love to know what other people thought about that segment of Titans of Tomorrow.


End file.
